GARY'S TOP TV OF 2020
2020 has given us a lot of time to watch telly. A LOT.
Luckily there’s been tonnes of amazing stuff and some shit. Here’s literally all of the TV me and Thom watched this year, in one big list. If anything’s left out it’s because we didn’t watch didn’t watch it. Notable omissions include The Queen’s Gambit which you couldn’t convince me to watch if you paid me because…TEN HOURS OF CHESS!! And The Crown because…TEN HOURS OF POSH CUNTS.
I’m only including new shows or new series of notable returning drama, reality and comedy otherwise Coronation Street would be top of the list as would the peerless Homes Under The Hammer!
From top favourite all the way down to most hated, here’s my list…it might hopefully include some stuff you might want to check out during the next in a long line of painfully boring lockdowns this shit show of a government keep putting us in…
Betty - this HBO comedy from Skate Kitchen creator Crystal Moselle was just perfection. Funny, real, young, exciting and fresh in a way television rarely is this new show about five young girl skate boarders from New York had a warmth of tone from start to end that just made you want MORE the minute it ended. I wanted to be a Betty! This sort of comedy is so hard to do and I just couldn’t stop thinking about the lives of these outsider queer girls and the beautiful photography and soundtrack. Download this and watch it NOW!!
Watchmen - okay this was from 2019 but I watched it in 2020 because I had to finish re-reading the graphic novel again. The most surprising, well plotted and visually interesting show on the list. How you do a continuation to a masterpiece that is this good, I’ll never know.
I May Destroy You - The fact that the two shows above made it ahead of I May Destroy You is the highest praise I could ever give anything as Michaela Coel’s masterpiece was THE TV SHOW OF THE YEAR. Engaging, fascinating, human, funny and with a brittle, powerful performance by Coel at it’s centre, I (and everyone else!) couldn’t get enough of this groundbreaking drama. It maybe did it’s queer characters a little dirty as the show reached it’s WOW finale but we will never forget this show’s thoughtfulness, honesty, point of view and that wonderful 2000s flashback school episode.
Avenue 5 - I think I just have the upmost respect for comedies that land as perfectly as Avenue 5 and Betty. This sci-fi comedy from the makers of The Thick Of It and Veep became oddly prescient as 2020 came into proper focus as the show is about how a small microcosm of people deals with a catastrophic problem terribly. Panic, incompetence, people promoted higher than their positions…sound familiar! The UK is basically the cruise liner Avenue 5 right now, floating adrift in space and run by morons. This show was biting, funny and has a stellar comedy cast including Rebecca Front as the ultimate Karen! Space Karen!
Small Axe - Steve McQueen’s collection of groundbreaking films about black Britain were just perfection. The first two telling the real story of the Mangrove 9 and the fictional story of two lovers meeting at a reggae house party in the 1980s were just heart-stopping and whilst the last three films in the series of films didn’t quite live up to their power, it’s the fact such fascinating, untold stories of black Britons were told with such perfection on Sunday night at 9 o clock that made this series so wonderful.
The Deuce - Series 3 - David Simon’s show about sex work, porn and gentrification in New York in the late 70s and early 1980s concluded perfectly.
Better Call Saul - Series 5 - This Breaking Bad prequel just gets better and better. Where is Rhea Seahorn’s Emmy nomination?! The best acted show on TV.
Ghosts - Series 2 and Christmas Special - just the most wonderful, joyful comedy that all the family can watch. Series 2 and the Christmas special were even better than the excellent first series. They’re all on iPlayer to just get them watched.
Mandy - Diane Morgan (aka Philomena Cunk off Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe) creates another perfect moron of a comedy character. This was like Viz comics coming to life and these 15 minute comedy episodes were each funnier than the last. The most original (and Northern) comedy in years.
I Hate Suzie - Another show alongside I May Destroy You that shows if you let women tell their stories you get new and exciting and often brutally honest, engaging drama. Billie Piper and Lucy Prebble (Succession) are a match made in heaven after creating Secret Diary of a Call Girl in the 2000s they come back together to make this exciting, unpredictable show about privacy, celebrity, sex and a woman’s right to be a complicated mess.
Earth to Ned - Okay this is a hilarious improvised Muppet chat show on Disney+ featuring a camp alien interviewing celebrities on a chat show on his space ship and it’s BRILLIANT!!!
The Masked Singer - this show is just perfectly silly, gets everyone together online guessing about the celebs under the mask, it looks great, has a great host, has Rita Ora being awful for us to hate watch. It’s just great Saturday night telly.
Slag Wars - I’m not gonna pretend this show (from porn website MEN.com) was well made, but it was well intentioned and hilarious and queer as fuck. Six queer people competing to be the next Cock Destroyer narrated by the internet’s own droll trans comedy icon Chase Icon?! What’s not to love? One of the most progressive, sex positive and inclusive shows out there.
Taskmaster - Series 10
Euphoria Special: Rue
Alma’s Not Normal - This was a comedy pilot you can still see on iPlayer from new comer Sophia Willan. It was really funny, very Northern and there’s a whole series coming next year.
Mrs America
Adult Material - This was dark, funny, shocking exploration of the sex industry in a three part comedy drama on Channel 4 from British writer Lucy Kirkwood
Midnight Gospel- a trippy animated podcast that explores the meaning of life from the makers of Adventure Time, Netflix’s best new show of the year for me.
Semi-Detatched - A genuinely funny, tighlly scripted, torturous, mean collection of farces that crashed onto BBC2 this year. Don’t be put off by Lee Mack, this is actually good unlike his dire self-penned sitcom Not Going Out.
His Dark Material Series 2
Cheer
Graysons Art Club
Canada’s Drag Race
Bojack Horseman - Final Season - there’s been a drop in quality from the super highs of seasons 3&4 but this was a solid end to an exceptional animated classic.
Little Mix The Search
RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 12
The Comedy Store - a documentary about the Comedy Store in LA from the drug fuelled 70s to the present day. A must for any US comedy fans.
Dracula
Drag Race Las Vegas Revue - the perfect trashy next stage in the evolution of Drag Race Queens taking over TV. A drag version of real housewives. “Go brush your hair” Naomi Smalls makes this series just brilliant to watch and the kind of high drama we miss of normal Drag Race now it’s gone mainstream.
Big Brother’s Best Shows - Sue me, it was nice to revisit the iconic episodes of BB and CBB during the height of lockdown. Made you miss simpler times of shoving bottles up your fanny and getting pregnant in a jacuzzi.
Laurel Canyon - an interesting 2 part documentary insight into 70s LA, the place and the music.
Staged - Michale Sheen and David Tennant’s liuvvie Zoom comedy was the best of the lockdown shows (much more interesting than Talking Heads remake for example), very funny with great guest stars. It’s back for a second series in January.
The Great British Bake Off - Not watched this for years but it was comforting during lockdown. Shame about the dull cast and mean judges and producers constantly setting the contestants difficult challenges to watch them fail, not the vibe of the show we all loved on BBC1.
Hollywood
Inside No 9 - Series 5 - not great by the usual standard of this excellent and innovative show, sadly no stand out episode this year but still great to watch and the Psychoville episode was a callback we didn’t know we needed.
Des
Quiz
Talking Heads
We’re Here - This drag queen makeover show starring Eureka O Hara, Shangella and Bob The Drag Queen was a repetative and miserable Drag SOS rip off, without the warmth and heart of the Family Gorgeous. We stopped watching after a few episodes but generally liked it.
Drag Race All Stars 5 - They weren’t all “stars” were they and this felt like they’re flogging a dead horse and they need to wait until the cast can be better before doing another one of these again.
Doctor Who Series 12 - my favourite TV show of all time hits rock bottom with terrible writing hampering the show. Such a shame. It did have one stand out episode and a new black female Doctor that showed the rest of the series and Jodie Whitaker up for being painfully boring. This show needs a new show runner asap.
Normal People - white straight people having sex and complaining about it.
Lovecraft Country - this had a great first episode but an awful, boring episode 2. We don’t give shows that can’t do a good second episode a second chance in this house, sadly. We didn’t get on with the tone of the show generally and felt like we understood and liked the 50s setting and exploration of race in America but does it need prior knowledge of Lovecraft to get into it properly? Seems a bit limiting if so.
The Bridge - a televised team building weekend
Devs - this was a long, drawn out, boring piece of shit that we watched all eight episodes of. We like Alex Garland’s work generally but this was so annoying, boring and, ironically, predictable for a show about determinism. I think this probably would have made a better film and felt like the cliffhangers were cheap and the central mystery very solvable and unsatisfying. Add to this the most annoying main character of the year and this ended up being a show we actually hated, which doesn’t often happen. But we did finish it, so that’s something. But it was a SLOG!
Feel Good - People loved this Mae Martin comedy about a lesbian female comic who was a drug addict but we found it annoying and just not that funny. Mae Martin has the dead cold eyes of a shark and all the dynamism of a discarded Bart Simpson Halloween mask, we just didn’t understand why the wonderful Charlotte Richie off Ghosts would want to be in a relationship with this woman. We switched this off before we even made it to the episodes with Lisa Kudrow in which goes to show how much we actively disliked this show.
Charlotte Richie and Mae Martin in Feel Good